: : : : : : : : I give up. "Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English
from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley..." by Stuart Berg Flexner & Anne H. Soukhanov has a "Scud"
entry but it doesn't give the origin of the term. I thought it was
an abbreviation (SCUD) but it is shown as "Scud." Maybe it's a Russian
word. Here's what was in the book: "Scud, a ballistic missile used
by the Iraqis against targets in both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Developed
by the Russians in the 1950s, it was a direct descendant of the
German V-2 used against allied cities in 1944-45. The Iraqis fired
a total of 81 Scuds. The U.S. countered with the Patriot Missile,
soon sorted to the Patriot."

: : : I've been through a few hours of on-line futility, and even
a little bit of library futility. You'd think the origin of Scud
would be easier to find. Anybody else?

: : It's on to the Pentagon. Who volunteers to call up the Pentagon's
information office and pose this question?

: Don't they have a web presence - that'll be the place to go.

Well, I pestered the Pentagon, NATO, and a bunch of other sources.
finally, some kindly folks at Janes, the military information epicenter,
sent me waaaaay more than I need to know about the history of the
Scud family of missiles. Now I know more than ever about propulsion
and throwweight... but only a little more about the source of the
name. It seems very likely that this is a NATO designation, not
a Russian one. The Russians use SS-1, etc., alphanumeric names...
while NATO assigns nicknames, most of which begin with S. So the
English word scud, meaning a fast-moving low cloud has moved into
the lead as a likely source.